Reading Racial Conflict

Racial conflict and mobilizations around demands for racial justice have increasingly commanded public and scholarly attention in the United States and elsewhere.
November 15, 2016
Category

Racial conflict and mobilizations around demands for racial justice have increasingly commanded public and scholarly attention in the United States and elsewhere. Frameworks for understanding the current moment and acting in it abound and generate much needed debate. With this series, we offer one lens into understanding the present: through a critical engagement with prior influential efforts to analyze racialization and the political economy of race in the past—what some scholars such as Cedric Robinson have labeled “racial capitalism.” Items, working with the multi-university Race and Capitalism project, asked a group of scholars to read the present moment through a “classic” or touchstone work in social science, the humanities, or African American studies—with what constitutes a “classic” left to each author’s discretion. Scholars shared how the insights of W. E. B. Du Bois, Ida B. Wells, C. L. R. James, Walter Rodney, and others might shed light on the current context and how economic, political, and racial inequalities shape each other—in the past, present, and future. The codirectors of the Race and Capitalism project, Michael Dawson of the University of Chicago and Megan Ming Francis of the University of Washington, joined the Items editors in curating this discussion, which provides a unique perspective into how growing economic inequality, political exclusion, a discriminatory criminal justice system, and social movements have collided in ways that seem both familiar and new.

The texts discussed in this series are:

Racism and the Class Struggle by James Boggs & Race and Class in the Southwest by Mario Barrera (Michael Dawson) ♦ Black Reconstruction in America by W. E. B. Du Bois (J. Phillip Thompson) ♦ How Europe Underdeveloped Africa by Walter Rodney (Tianna Paschel) ♦ Crusade for Justice, Southern Horrors & The Red Record by Ida B. Wells (Megan Ming Francis) ♦ Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams (Adom Getachew) ♦ Black Awakening in Capitalist America by Robert Allen (N. D. B. Connolly) ♦ Darkwater, Black Reconstruction in America, & Dusk of Dawn by W. E. B. Du Bois (Ella Myers) ♦ The essays of Jack O’Dell (Nikhil Pal Singh) ♦ The Challenge of Change: Crisis in Our Two-Party System by Edward Brooke (Leah Wright Rigueur) ♦ Blood in My Eye by George Jackson (Dan Berger)

Race, Capitalism, and Conflict Then and Now

by and

Michael Dawson and Megan Ming Francis, curators for and contributors to the “Reading Racial Conflict” series, conclude the series with a set of reflections on the ways RRC authors bring the deep lessons from classic works in the political economy of race to bear on the present. They call attention to key themes that cut cross the essays: the persistence of violence visited on and the demonization of African Americans; the place of race in the development of capitalism and class formation; how capitalist development and racism deepen divides between the white and black working classes; class divisions within the black community; and how the intersections of race and capital shape inequalities globally.

Read more
October 3, 2017

Prisons and Other Maladies of the Racist State: Reading Blood in my Eye in the Era of Mass Incarceration

by

Our “Reading Racial Conflict” series continues with a reflection on the evolution of mass incarceration policies. Dan Berger engages the present through George Jackson’s Blood in My Eye. Published posthumously in 1972 after Jackson’s death in a prison revolt he led, the book engages the intersection of race, imprisonment, and capitalism as it appeared in an earlier polarized period in the United States. Berger suggests Jackson’s work may be newly relevant in a political moment in which the slow reversal of mass incarceration strategies may itself be reversed in the current administration.

Read more
July 11, 2017

Neoliberal Social Justice: From Ed Brooke to Barack Obama

by

Leah Wright Rigueur, as part of our "Reading Racial Conflict" series, critically engages with the career and the writings of Edward Brooke in a reflection on the arguments for and limits of capitalism to uplift African Americans out of poverty. She also deploys Brooke, the first popularly elected black senator in US history who served in the 1960s and 1970s, as a window onto how Barack Obama connects racial inequalities to access to the market. Brooke’s The Challenge of Change: Crisis in Our Two-Party System makes the case for a “progressive conservatism” that sheds light on how parts of the black community today embrace what Rigueur regards as the contemporary neoliberal moment.

Read more
May 30, 2017

Capitalism, Colonialism, and the Long Arc of Black Struggle: Reading Jack O’Dell

by

Nikhil Singh’s essay for our "Reading Racial Conflict" series reflects on the work of black activist and intellectual Jack O’Dell. For Singh, O’Dell’s historical analysis of the relationship between antiracist and anticapitalist movements is relevant in a moment in which voices on the American left are debating the compatibility between politics of the (white) working class vis-à-vis that of marginalized identities. O’Dell’s focus on the reinventing of black freedom struggles over the long term provides an opportunity to consider the present in light of that history.

Read more
April 4, 2017

Beyond the Wages of Whiteness: Du Bois on the Irrationality of Antiblack Racism

by

Ella Myers provides an account of W. E. B. Du Bois's nuanced analysis of the sense of entitlement among whites in the United States. Drawing from Du Bois's Black Reconstruction and other writings, Myers draws attention to both the concept of a compensatory "wage" that elevates the social status of lower class whites in ways that bind them to white capital, but also to the irrational aspects of antiblack racism. Myers's essay complements the earlier "Reading Racial Conflict" essay by J. Phillip Thompson on Black Reconstruction, and also makes a direct connection to debates on the role of the white working class in Trump's electoral victory.

Read more
March 21, 2017

Black and Woke in Capitalist America: Revisiting Robert Allen’s Black Awakening… for New Times’ Sake

by

In a new contribution to the "Reading Racial Conflict" series, N. D. B. Connolly analyzes an early gathering of black supporters in the new Trump administration, and much more about the contemporary political economy of race, through Robert Allen’s 1969 Black Awakening in Capitalist America. Drawing on Allen, Connolly makes a strong case for the relevance of (neo)colonialism—and its emphasis on both violence and the co-opting of sections of the elite among the “colonized”—as an essential framework for understanding America’s present.

Read more
March 7, 2017

Reparations and the Recasting of Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery

by

Adom Getachew engages in a close reading of Eric Williams’s Capitalism and Slavery in our latest essay in the "Reading Racial Conflict" series. Getachew connects Williams’s classic argument for how the institution of slavery fueled capitalist development in the global North to recent demands, emerging from the Caribbean and other regions devastated by the slave trade, for reparations.

Read more
February 22, 2017

Ida B. Wells and the Economics of Racial Violence

by

In the latest essay in our "Reading Racial Conflict" series, Megan Ming Francis draws attention to the extraordinary work of Ida B. Wells. In the late nineteenth century, Wells exposed the extent of racial violence in the United States by documenting lynching and then disseminating her findings through her books, journalism, and activism. Ming Francis emphasizes a further innovation by Wells—i.e., how she connected lynchings to the economic interests and status anxieties of white southerners, as well as the relevance of this connection to understanding contemporary racial conflicts.

Read more
January 24, 2017

Walter Rodney and the Racial Underpinnings of Global Inequality

by

Tianna Paschel’s contribution to the "Reading Racial Conflict" series takes an international perspective. Her essay examines the roots and persistence of racial inequalities globally through the legacies of colonialism and impact of transnational capitalism. Paschel engages these questions of global justice through the lens of Walter Rodney and his extraordinarily influential book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Paschel argues for the continued relevance of this classic work to understanding today’s global economy and its winners and losers.

Read more
December 20, 2016

Capitalism, Democracy, and Du Bois’s Two Proletariats

by

J. Phillip Thompson’s contribution to the "Reading Racial Conflict" series reflects on the concept of the two proletariats developed by W. E. B. Du Bois in his Black Reconstruction. Du Bois’s notion of a working class bifurcated along racial lines, Thompson argues, is critical for understandings of American capitalism and democracy. Thompson sees movements for racial justice as central to addressing inequalities, no less so than those directly claiming to represent the working class, which have historically tended to exclude black workers.

Read more
December 6, 2016
1 2
Close